Power and the Gospel

Cathedral, Colosseum, Catacomb, Cross

The most exquisite and elaborate artwork I have ever seen.

Italy is the home of countless cathedrals, basilicas and churches that house what might be considered the most beautiful artwork in the world.  This expansive collection of paintings, statues, architecture and frescos, of unimaginable value, seems to go on forever! 

Almost all of this artwork celebrates and commemorates the Christian faith. 

The reason?  Since the time of Constantine, for about the last 1700 years, the Christian religion has enjoyed a favored status with the people of power in the Western world. These powerful people funded these artistic endeavors with what seemed to be limitless resources.

Prior to that, the Christian religion did NOT have a “favored” status, and so before Constantine there were very minimal structures or statues of any comparable scale or beauty, and Christian artwork was humble at best. 

Prior to Constantine the historical site that best represents the Christian life in Rome for the first 300 years was …

the colosseum and the catacombs

The colosseum is where Christians were fed to lions because of their faith, and the catacombs are where they at times found safety from that persecution. The catacombs were underground caves, where Christians met, and sang in worship to Jesus, and ate the bread and drank the cup together, commemorating the sacrificial death of their King.

This strange ceremony mocks death through a symbolic eating of flesh and drinking of blood!

And they can mock death, because their King, Jesus of Nazareth, has conquered death, through his own death, burial and resurrection. 

In those caves, and throughout the Roman Empire, the message of the Gospel spread to thousands. And many of those followers of Jesus ended up being martyred in the colosseum. In this way, we see that below the surface of the beautiful country of Italy, one can find a vivid example of the irony and scandal of the Gospel. 

This is astounding. 
 
From the beginning, the message of the Gospel of Jesus spread like wildfire, and between AD 40 and AD 300 it is estimated that the number of Christians grew from that first group of Jesus followers to a over six million.  Yes, that’s over 6,000,000 people who decided to claim that Jesus was their King, in a time when doing so often meant they would be persecuted, tortured and very possibly killed for doing so.

Here’s my takeaway.

Today, we stand at the end of an era. The time in which Christianity enjoyed a favored status by people in power is coming to a close. Currently we have the freedom to speak, publish, and create music and movies that celebrates Christianity. This freedom to create art that reflects the Gospel is a precious gift and I applaud and support those Christians who seek to use their creative abilities this way. The freedom to worship openly, and to speak publicly the message of Jesus is a gift, and we would be wise to leverage it while we can. That freedom may soon be gone, and I am sad to see it go. But … 

But the way I read history, the people of Jesus hold in their hands the most powerful message, that is, the most powerful force in the universe.

Although we, as followers of the Way, have always and will always leverage the freedoms and human power we have for the propagation of our message, we do not need human power structures to accomplish our purpose. It is good for us to remember… 
 
It was that persecuted band of rebels that turned the world upside down. 
 
And they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men have turned the world upside down, and now they have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.”